Bethesda’s Peter Hines recalls an early Starfield glitch that saw a gigantic killer shark take a ride in an elevator and terrorise a city’s unsuspecting populace.
One of the oft-shared lines from Bethesda head of publishing Peter Hines in recent days was “We embrace chaos”. It was a catchy way of addressing the assorted bugs and glitches found in the studio’s output – not least its new sci-fi epic Starfield, which is officially out today (6 September).
That quote came from GamesIndustry.biz's excellent 1 September interview, which also contains another juicy, bug-related tidbit, as noted by Gamespot: one of Starfield’s zanier glitches, which emerged before its release, saw a Jaws-like killer shark take a ride in an elevator.
“On Neon, a planet covered entirely in water with a city that sits on top of it, we had a bug where a shark was able to get on an elevator,” Hines recalled. “Then the elevator doors would open on a street level and the shark would come sliding out – everybody screams and starts running in every direction. I’m laying into it with weapons, people are screaming and guards are running. I said: ‘Do not take this bug out of the game!’ I’m almost positive they did but I love that stuff.”
If this is what Hines means by embracing the chaos, then frankly we’re all for it. Or, as he puts it, “Of course there are bugs. But does it take away from your experience? Or do you have a consistent, fun game that you just can’t stop playing and experimenting with?”
Well, quite. If the shark glitch has been fixed, can someone create a mod that puts it back in, please? This is one bit of shark-based sci-fi chaos we’d genuinely like to see for ourselves.
Read more: Starfield | You can’t land on planets from space – but you can fly inside them
